“Laird,” he said,
“you don’t want to fight that man.
It’s just like
suicide. You’d
better settle this thing, now.”

So there was a settlement. Laird
took back all he had said; Mark said he really
had nothing against Laird—­the discussion
had been purely journalistic and did not need
to be settled in blood. He said that both
he and Laird were probably the victims of their friends.
I remember one of the things Laird said when his second
told him he had better not fight.

“Fight! H—­l,
no! I am not going to be murdered by that d—­d
desperado.”

Sam had sent another challenge to a
man named Cutler, who had been somehow mixed up
with the muss and had written Sam an insulting letter;
but Cutler was out of town at the time, and before
he got back we had received word from Jerry Driscoll,
foreman of the Grand jury, that the law just passed,
making a duel a penitentiary offense for both
principal and second, was to be strictly enforced,
and unless we got out of town in a limited number
of hours we would be the first examples to test
the new law.

We concluded to go, and when the stage left next morning
for San Francisco we were on the outside seat.
Joe Goodman had returned by this time and agreed to
accompany us as far as Henness Pass. We were all
in good spirits and glad we were alive, so Joe did
not stop when he got to Henness Pass, but kept on.
Now and then he would say, “Well, I had better
be going back pretty soon,” but he didn’t
go, and in the end he did not go back at all, but
went with us clear to San Francisco, and we had a
royal good time all the way. I never knew any
series of duels to close so happily.

So ended Mark Twain’s career on the Comstock.
He had come to it a weary pilgrim, discouraged and
unknown; he was leaving it with a new name and fame—­elate,
triumphant, even if a fugitive.

XLVI

GETTING SETTLED IN SAN FRANCISCO

This was near the end of May, 1864. The intention
of both Gillis and Clemens was to return to the States;
but once in San Francisco both presently accepted
places, Clemens as reporter and Gillis as compositor,
on the ‘Morning Call’.

From ‘Roughing It’ the reader gathers
that Mark Twain now entered into a life of butterfly
idleness on the strength of prospective riches to be
derived from the “half a trunkful of mining stocks,”
and that presently, when the mining bubble exploded,
he was a pauper. But a good many liberties have
been taken with the history of this period. Undoubtedly
he expected opulent returns from his mining stocks,
and was disappointed, particularly in an investment
in Hale and Norcross shares, held too long for the
large profit which could have been made by selling
at the proper time.